How To: #BecomingAnAdultTips – 9

The things you never knew you needed to know…

Becoming an adult is a troublesome process. Few people make it out of adulthood alive. Whether you’re scraping twenty-one or hitting forty, there is always another mistake you didn’t know you needed to make as part of your overall growing process. Basically, this is a compilation of things you didn’t know you needed to know. I’ve done the research, the groundwork and a lot of really stupid sh** so that you don’t have to. From paddling pools to pirate costumes, achieving adult status is not always what it seems…

Tip no. 9 – Adults are Above Peer Pressure

At university, with choice and articulate phrases like “down it fresher” and “spillage is lickage” being bandied about, it’s hard not to see the merit in sucking tequila off a dubiously speckled lino floor.

We’ve all at some point also been on the other side – responsible for duct taping plastic litre bottles of warm, own-brand crap to someone’s appendages and forcing them to play “Edward Cider Hands.”

IF, as an adult, however, when you are in a bar, club, park, office toilets, train carriage—or wherever else you choose to drown your sorrows as you watch your coveted youth pass you by without so much as a by-your-leave—you are still that guy shouting “get it down ya son!” and other encouraging and pithy utterances at some poor, unsuspecting bloke from accounts who just wanted to have a drink to celebrate the birth of his first child, then we need to have a chat.

At university, we were simpler creatures, slave only to our hormones and our deep sense of fear that we might not drink enough vodka red bulls to make Gary-with-the-eyebrow-piercing think we’re cool. Now that we’ve grown up, our tastes have become subtler, and so—and here’s the rub—have our methods of peer pressure.

HAH! See, you thought I was preaching abstinence from the silly ways of judging someone for how much WKD they can strawpedo. No, I am just reminding you that we’re adults now, and, like our bodies and our stock options, our psychological warfare must mature.

Instead of making someone do a suicide shot, order them a Johnnie Walker Black Label and if they wuss out of drinking it, silently raise an eyebrow, drink theirs as well and remember to tell the rest of the guys about that time you caught them humming Taylor Swift in the stationery cupboard.

When they look a bit fuzzy over dinner, pretend not to notice and order another bottle of red, looking them deep in the eye as you sip your nineteenth glass, still capable of discussing the state of the automotive industry in Detroit, just so that they know you’re better than them.

Peer pressure is something that we face throughout life, from what toy to pick at Nursery, to which sofa you watch Countdown from in the old folks’ home. The true sign that you are an adult is not leaving it behind and becoming a kind, non-judgemental and reserved person, but is in fact learning to enact higher levels of guerrilla psychological warfare than ever before without anybody noticing.